The FBI and Coast Guard boarded hacked oil tankers approaching US shores this week, in at least one case finding that the ship's navigation and propulsion systems had been compromised remotely. Simultaneously, the FCC under Brendan Carr waived its longstanding rule limiting foreign equity ownership in broadcast media to 25 percent, clearing the way for three sovereign-adjacent entities to hold stakes in the Paramount-Warner Bros. deal. The juxtaposition is almost too neat.
Critical Infrastructure, Selectively Defined
The US government's definition of what counts as critical infrastructure worth protecting has always been politically convenient rather than technically coherent. Ships carrying oil near American coastlines are infrastructure. Broadcast media shaping American political opinion is, apparently, not. Carr's FCC spent visible energy this week scrutinizing who The View interviews rather than who owns the company broadcasting it. That is not a coincidence. It is a priority statement.
The Real Cyberwar Hitting Physical Systems
The tanker hacks are the more quietly alarming story. Compromising navigation on a vessel at sea is not a data breach. It is the digital equivalent of cutting a ship's wheel. A CISA framework from 2023 identified maritime systems as among the highest-risk vectors for state-sponsored interference, partly because the sector's operational technology runs on legacy systems that were never designed to be networked. The FBI investigation suggests that window is already being exploited. The FCC's media ownership waiver suggests the window for consistent national security logic may have closed some time ago.